Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Glossary of terms
- Map 1 Madras Presidency, 1900
- Map 2 Pudukkottai State
- The Tondaiman line of Pudukkottai
- PART 1 INTRODUCTION
- PART 2 HISTORY AND ETHNOHISTORY
- PART 3 A LITTLE KINGDOM IN THE OLD REGIME
- PART 4 SOCIAL RELATIONS OF A LITTLE KINGDOM
- 7 Royal Kallars
- 8 Political hegemony and social relations: caste in Pudukkottai
- 9 Temples and society
- PART 5 COLONIAL MEDIATIONS: CONTRADICTIONS UNDER THE RAJ
- PART 6 CONCLUSION
- Appendix: Land and privilege: inams in Pudukkottai
- References
- List of records and abbreviations
- List of archives and record offices
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
9 - Temples and society
from PART 4 - SOCIAL RELATIONS OF A LITTLE KINGDOM
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of maps
- List of tables
- Preface
- Glossary of terms
- Map 1 Madras Presidency, 1900
- Map 2 Pudukkottai State
- The Tondaiman line of Pudukkottai
- PART 1 INTRODUCTION
- PART 2 HISTORY AND ETHNOHISTORY
- PART 3 A LITTLE KINGDOM IN THE OLD REGIME
- PART 4 SOCIAL RELATIONS OF A LITTLE KINGDOM
- 7 Royal Kallars
- 8 Political hegemony and social relations: caste in Pudukkottai
- 9 Temples and society
- PART 5 COLONIAL MEDIATIONS: CONTRADICTIONS UNDER THE RAJ
- PART 6 CONCLUSION
- Appendix: Land and privilege: inams in Pudukkottai
- References
- List of records and abbreviations
- List of archives and record offices
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES
Summary
Honor and privilege
Once privileges and honors are given, people will live only for them, preferring to starve rather than, for example, being served on anything but a double plantain leaf.
The Pallavarayar chief, July 1982Kaniyatci, one of the fundamental rights in local society, was seen, inter alia, as a right (urimai) to a share (panku) in one's local temple (kovil). Without this right, one did not qualify as a full member of the local community. As we have seen in the last two chapters, temples were often regarded as the primary institution which enabled the formation of communities. These then took on consanguineous, affinal, and territorial forms. The temple was the common ground where each caste had a role, and where the position of each unit of the community was ordered with respect to all the other constituent units. Each social and territorial unit – from the subcaste natu to the village, from the lineage to the family – had a temple which defined its social and ritual being. Temples also situated local society within the larger context of the subcaste/territory and the little kingdom by creating contexts for participation and worship stretching all the way up to the grand state festivals which took place in the tutelary temple of the royal family. Everyone in the state worshipped the family deity of the Tondaimans.
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- The Hollow CrownEthnohistory of an Indian Kingdom, pp. 285 - 306Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988